Design Thinking

October 26, 2015

Companies that are facing industry disruptions are bad enough; during these times leadership faces the most important test – the ability to lead during a crisis. The need of foresight, change and organization design are what true leadership looks like. Some sees this an opportunity to gain power and fulfill their thirst for greed and this needs to be stopped. Because strategic leadership matters… whether through malice or naïveté, those who abuse or tolerate the abuse of leadership place companies at risk.

Poor leadership cripples businesses abilities to accept new realities, correct mistakes and make strategic bets. At lower levels in the hierarchy, the problem was even more severe because in decisions and lack of strategy. Seeing things for what they are. Strong crisis leaders live on the front end of reality and speak in future tense. They recognize systemic drivers and their significance and do not shy away from the consequences of what they see. Foresight and strategic intellectual integrity is a key component of crisis leadership; they think of what is best for the organization, not their own personal or political gain. Poor strategic leadership is often the results of the following:

THE FALLACY OF FORESIGHT

Poor leadership assumes that the climate will gradually improve and things will not get worse. They think the future is predictable and they have a good pulse of the market better than others. Often what they have is groupthink. The reality is things do get worse and they are still reacting to the shift rather than getting ahead of the shift. They could not connect all the variables that are shaping the future of the business and fail to calculate the unforeseen market, industry, technological, social, and behavioral shifts. The fallacy of prediction inevitably led to the downfall of many businesses.

Strategic foresight is often lacking to allow the companies think ahead of the curve. Strategy and detail with speed and clarity. They are able to see the big picture. They can see all of the moving parts and understand what is cause and what is effect. They get below the 30,000ft level and can dig deep into detail without being mired in it. They quickly develop a very detailed knowledge of the issues. This ability further enhances their capacity to view the problem realistically.

THE FALLACY OF SECRECY

Poor leadership believes it is better to shield middle and junior employees from the seriousness of the crisis and radiate a false sense of comfort hoping people won’t read what’s out there. The most common defensive speech usually include 1/ We still a very loyal customer base and they are very loyal to us 2/ We still have a lot of cash 3/ Our product is good and we need better marketing 4/ We are not aggressive enough in pricing. All wrong. Many of these can go away very quickly. Companies should connect their passion points to a foresight-based business strategy that are executable to secure their support and commitment.

THE FALLACY OF ORGANIZATION

Poor leadership usually based them on the notion that a new organization structure is important to formally show the transformation. Any formal organization redesign takes too much time to execute and slow down the transformation. This is the time where they should get rid of people’s title and organize as hubs and networks to executive their strategies. It needs to act as an attacker not a defender. Defender usually won’t survive. Leaders must be strong enough to hold themselves (and the board) accountable for the past transgressions of turning a blind eye from right and poor decisions or indecisions that led to the current state. Current problems are most likely the results of decisions that were made 24-36 months ago. Strong leaders take ownership of the problem and acknowledge that no magic can undo these poor decisions.

They understand, however, that a long-term solution requires the input and involvement of many stakeholders. They identify those individuals and work together towards a solution that everyone can support and can live with. They also need to differentiate from those who take advantage of the crisis by advancing their own agendas even at the expense of the organization. The successful crisis leader seeks out individuals who have a different and strategic perspective on an issue even whose advice may be contrary to that of their board.

Crisis is the time for real strategic leadership. It is the time to deliver bad news when they need to and do it in a way that avoids panic and provides a realistic level of hope for the future. Above all, they are courageous enough to make sharp decisions, act with speed and take carefully calculated risks.

September 07, 2015

Many times when people walk out of a meeting and look happy it is because they have achieved consensus and can now move forward. I always question if this is a sign of a good outcome or not. While having everyone on the same page and sharing the same vision is without question a good thing. But arriving on a strategic decision based on consensus may not.

So they say a good team worker knows how to get consensus. It is an overly simplistic way of management decisions making. The best teamwork and team leadership is not about getting quick consensus. 99% of the time consensus making is a time wasting exercise (much like those UN meetings) and is a false ideal that many young managers are trying to follow.

Consensus means using the lowest common denominator and is a sure way to achieve under-performance and mediocrity. More, it means poor leadership - you just reduced your leadership capacity to a facilitator and avoided doing the job that you're supposed to do - make decisions that you are capable of and justifiable.

It has been said that true consensus involves "meeting everyone’s or those with the needs." Consensus decision-making is intended to de-emphasize the role of factions and get stakeholders to arrive at a common acceptable solution. Because it seeks to minimize objection, it is great for large organizations so no one will be taking the full responsibility in the event of a bad outcome.

The goal for a CEO is never to seek an OK or acceptable solution for the organization. His/her job is not to please everyone. The job is to make the right decision considering all risks factors and possibilities. Consensus involves debate. It is fine to debate; it is fine to allow people to have a voice; it is also fine to ignore many of these requests; and it is fine to ignore them when there is no logic to support it. Today, if you wait for every last person to agree and add in their feedback, you competition will eat you. Or your great idea will be diluted into some incremental thing that takes 3 years to fully implement.

Consensus often means the status quo. It means not taking the threat lightly and deciding to stay the course, which is human nature. So, when people get together to discuss the possibility of doing something radically innovative, expect 80% of people will vote for avoiding making such changes. Those who push for the status quo will always gain better support because it is easily to show data to support it. Consensus brings people back to the middle where the majority approves but mediocrity reigns.

Consensus often means leaving unresolved conflict or issues and pretending it would go away. Consensus prevents tough conversations from happening and so one will upset anyone so the meeting can end quickly. It helps avoid facing the reality. Then they will talk after meeting. Consensus means forget the idea go big or go home. No one will bet their career on any crazy idea even though deep down in their hearts they like the idea. They are just managerially uncomfortable or incapable of making those bold decisions. They are trained for the opposite.

Good leadership is to make tough decisions and trade offs. Leadership is to know where a company is heading and make decisions that lead to the best results. Good leadership is not wasting too much time to get consensus. Good leadership is making a strategic decision and committing to it.

August 31, 2015

In an interesting conversation with clients this week and discussions were around the question: “should companies plan for the distant future (10 years and beyond) and what is needed to get out of a death spiral where a slow death is in the making?”

There is a big difference between growing with age and growing old. With age, it sometimes comes with wisdom. With more than a dozen of C-suite execs that I have worked with or coached, for most of them, the wisdom came one day after they had passed the age of 50. Growing comes with age, which sometimes take away the energy and urge to make radical change. Ask yourself or your organization, the last 5 years your company or yourself should be referred to as a “growth experience” or “aging experience”.

A CEO’s job is to make sure the company is growing with experience” and not “aging with experience”. Company needs constant renewal, the leadership team is expected to generate enough energy to motivate the entire company. You need a strategy to energize and motivate. Not empty speech and propaganda video and banners. Time doesn’t mean we gain more experience. Reinvention, renewal and resetting are mantras for growing experiences. We shape what we become. When companies are stuck in a stagnant mode or worse in a downward spiral, it is because of the experience they have. Not because the new things that they try. They are usually too old (state of mind), conservative, naive and irrelevant and that managerial mindset is holding the company back for serious reinvention.

A look back at many failing leaders’ biggest attempts to bring their companies back for the past 10 years reveals an embarrassing series of missteps, mistakes, and flat-out bad products, culminating in a flurry of poorly-executed uncommitted attempt to create and own a distinct market positioning. Most of the time, the product failed before they are being introduced. No one can do anything at that time. Think about the following:

We have been very good in making this and we should be fine.

We always do things this way. It is too risky for us to change.

Let’s watch where the market is going first. We can wait.

We need to do what Apple, Nike, Amazon and Starbucks do.

We should hedge our bets and try different things too.

Let’s give the market what they want and make sure we have a competitively cheaper offer.

If you do one or a few of the above, you will most likely be somewhere along the downward spiral. For companies to end the spiral of death, it takes more than cost-cutting and requires an orchestrated effort for everyone involved to imagine and see the possibility forward. It is about applying a practical future-oriented foresight to drive strategy and unleashing the company from legacy people, thinking and even management board. There is no place for the “old" in the world of constant resets.

August 16, 2015

Why do some companies make so much profit and command price premiums while some continually struggle to make minimum margin and gain market share despite spending good money on advertising, buying channel presence with some even having a better designed product?

The secret is very simple. Though these different high performance companies operate in very different industries and face different challenges, the major reason for their success comes down to one thing. They understand it is all about the customer experience. And they don’t even have to do it for everyone. At least not initially.

They are putting their customers at the center of their universe; they also understand that not every company can do that (including their competitors who are many times bigger and with big marketing budget) because it will be difficult or too expensive for them to make that work for everyone.

The secret is that you should start with ‘not everyone’ and identify those ‘someone who cares’. Those someones who appreciate the extra things that you do and will ultimate tell everyone about it and essentially those become the most tangible evidence of your brand promise. The declining effectiveness of advertising is well evidenced and many marketers are still doing that despite their value propositions which are unclear, and customer experience is underwhelming. And instead of spending time and resources on the latter, they take the easy path and buy more display advertising, it is not going to work.

Smart companies understand that success depends most fundamentally on a few core customers and if you can tailor your customer value propositions to them and then design the experiences just for them, you’re on the right track and can achieve a new level of performance and differentiation. These customer experiences are not about a $50 rebate, or a free something or many thank you emails. These are things that consumers take for granted and believe you’re doing it to get their business as the cost of doing business.

Customer experience needs to get emotional. This is how our brains are wired and this is when design thinking comes into play. You need to map the customer journeys and engineer happy accidents. Not a business process exercise at all and don’t mix them up. Walk their shoes in their everyday life and constantly invent new ways to apply the best value propositions on minimal scale. Remember customer experience is not about being well said, it is about being well done and it is not a published rule book. It is embedded in your culture and how your brand dictates your behavior.

August 03, 2015

Digital disruption to the media began early in the days of the Internet throwing every media company into a crisis mode. Now this is happening again - this time, even homepage viewership is on the decline. I am not saying this is the death of the webpage, having a webpage or content site is simply not enough. Content is now distributed and stories are best shared and read through new platforms such as Facebook’s Instant Articles, Apple News, Buzzfeed, the Starbucks mobile app or through Reddit, a bulletin board platform that doesn’t sound like something new since the early days of the Internet. It is an entertainment, social network, and news website where registered community members can submit content, such as text posts or direct links, making it essentially a crowd sourced news channel.

Today all Millennials are gravitating to social networks and news media sites and assume everything is free. This generation, (confident, always connected, ramen-eating, ultra short attention span, impecunious, underemployed, some over-educated, gaming obsessed, and so forth) millennials are not only the largest generation in US and world history, they’re on the cusp of commanding the largest influence and voice of our consumer culture. They expect technology to work and simply-work and if it doesn’t, you will have a big problem. They are tech-loving consumers but have unrealistic expectations that technology needs to be seamless (thanks to Apple) with a new standard of intuitiveness. They align themselves with the latest technology and will try anything new and cool and quick to critic and quick to find workaround. Computers don't crash and smart phones should be able to handle everything.

Millennials don’t watch TV (and others are following) and they sleep with their cell phones next to them perhaps 9 out of 10. Probably 10 out of 10 have no landlines and no interest in watching TV. Smartphone is the most important tool in their lives and when people are saying the smartphone is becoming a commodity. It is not. How can it be when it is the most important tool or digital companion? Smartphones are not doing well because the expectation is rising and Smartphones have replaced the cigarette (good thing) as things to do in those odd moments, lonely moments or simply filling up every minute of downtime. It is replacing newspaper, cigarette, chewing gum, calculator, wallet and many other tools…. hookups, meet-ups or start-ups.

There is no online or offline, social is social and other opinions matter. They get along well with their parents and even have friendship with parents, which didn’t happen in the older generation. They actually influence what products their parents buy, what apps their parents use and where to travel. They have a “we can fix it together” mindset and “we can change it all” attitude. That’s why they love working for start-ups and game changing companies with a purpose.

More millennials than non-millennials integrate their beliefs and causes into their choice of companies to support, their purchases, and their day-to-day interactions. They put the money where the mouth is. Millennials also care about what’s genuine and authentic. They are looking for somewhere between a retro aesthetic and a search for honesty and authenticity. Something advertisers are still struggling with. For many millennials, they prefer to climb the Himalayas then corporate ladder. They are raised to believe they can do whatever they want and they are hitting the realities as they enter the society. Millennials are hard to catch. Media companies are not getting it. You need to work harder.

July 10, 2015

Almost all companies at some point face some serious crisis. Sometimes it is clear that the end is near or coming and no can see the light at the end of the tunnel, at least not until you see it. Sometimes you know there is a way out but not sure how.Facing with disruptive changes driven by innovative technologies or shifting regulations, it is clear that the strategy is no longer working. You see the demand of your products is disappearing or new business models or low cost payers are eating your lunch. What do you do?

There is often a short window of opportunity to do something radically different; it has to be drastically different. Any incremental change or window dressing will push you closer to the end. If there’s a chance (there are always chances) of saving the company, make sure your executive team is focusing on three things. Read on.

For decades, I have been studying, observing, advising, and directing companies globally on their journeys to find growth, reignite growth, avoid decline, avoid death and reinvent themselves. Here are the three things you must pay attention to:

The first one is stop and think. Don't push the panic button. Go on a short vacation (go somewhere far) and find some time away from the madness and clear your mind. Think how to steer your organization’s course away from the one that got you into this mess in the first place. Don’t madly run around rearranging the decks chairs on a sinking ship. Find the source of problem and stop the leaking. Avoid hanging to the past, board of directors have different views and industry lifecycles are showing something different. The one thing for sure is what was working in the beginning would not work today and in times of uncertainty people go back to the past and hang on to something that once worked well.

Think what strategy will leapfrog you into the future. What business model options are there and what behavior will impact customer preference in the future. You need to think ahead more. Executive focus on rather short-term horizons due to public pressure in the case of public companies and forget about how important it is to create the future. They assume the same formula that gets them there in the first place can get them there to the future. Or they focus on internal politics and as a result cause inactions. The organizations are operating on old mental models and not recognizing that their business models have expired. They failed to reinvent their core and yet they have no clue on to how to invent the future. There are endless debates and power points but no action to invent the future.

The second one is to give your company a larger purpose. Don't underestimate the power of purpose. It needs to be big. It cannot be about you or customers, that’s not enough. What is your version of “making a dent in the universe?”

To keep people focused and inspired, give them something to work toward. We all need a reason to come to work (at least for the best people) and there is not a more important time to remind them. Otherwise they will leave. We all need a purpose; it is the only thing that people can hang on to through tough times. It is what makes the company resilient.

The third one is maintaining positive emotive energy. People are going to be worried, insecure, frustrated and even angry. You need to care about them and allow room for them to express it while making sure leadership radiates a sense of energy, not fear. Energy doesn’t come from empty words but a real sense of optimism backed by strategy and action.

A sound strategy to bring back the company is what forms the core of the energy and radiates them through open dialogue – not newsletter or email. Don’t drive these discussions underground and make sure all senior executives are available to talk with people. Open communication is important to maintain the trust.

All great companies go through very difficult times at some point and some even have near death experiences. They survive disruptions and even self-destruction in order for them to get to the next level. No companies are immune and anytime we think we are safe we are taking the first step on the path to decline. The concept of core competencies is an interesting idea. Whether the companies’ core competencies are giving products and services unique functionality or building a worldwide distribution, this could lead to a decision with companies avoiding to think "New Game." It provides logic for the strategy but also limiting strategic options. In the strategic making process, competencies need to go beyond the core. It is not a time to be academic. Strategy making is a dynamic exercise that allows you to see the whole system (industry) before you zoom into your value-creating activities.

When companies are on a path of rapid decline, and see the decline accelerating, they go into a panic mode and embark on multiple tactical measures that are not addressing the core problems. Being able to frame the core problems even under extreme pressure is critical and not putting 100% of your energy on things that doesn't matter. All the repeated unsuccessful tactical attempts will drain the company’s resources, human energy and customer confidence until they have no turning point. Maintaining the energy or Chi (Chi is a Chinese word meaning aliveness, life force energy or life breath) is vital for turnaround and it doesn’t matter if you have the right strategy, without the energy or Chi, you won’t be able to execute the strategy.

April 13, 2015

Every one is an expert in marketing these days. And with social media, everyone is an ad critic. Not entirely a bad thing, but as marketers you need know how to filter the noise. People need to understand the difference between STRATEGIC MARKETING, MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS and CHANNEL MARKETING. These are three very different things. The first one is strategic and is tightly linked to business strategy and decisions are made based on what and how to invest, the second one is about advertising (there is no social only advertising or no advertising only social..either way that's where we're going) and the third is about activations and promotions in the field.

I am writing this blog post while shopping at a Prada store. It is a good place to write about marketing because luxury goods companies such as Prada understand building brand equity, communicating brand desire and staging customer experience. I bought my new Prada briefcase and shoes for three reasons in the following order: 1/ Brand 2/ Product 3/ Experience. I see many great design but their brand is never part of my consideration. Product is great and I need to like it. The experience makes me feel like buying more stuff.

There are many myths in marketing despite it is a relative mature practice and companies are still making the same common mistakes. Every senior marketers and CMOs can benefit from reading this:

Marketing Mistake #1: Marketing is all about driving sales.

Many people still confuse marketing with sales. Selling is only a part of the marketing function, but marketing is much broader than selling. It is not one is more important than the other. Marketing begins before a company design or conceptualize an idea or design or engineer any products or services. Marketing continues throughout the whole product’s lifecycle. Its mandate is the continued discovery of new ways to create, communicate and capture value. Marketing is not and should not be considered a cost; in fact it is an investment. Imagine if a business stops investing? If marketing cost is linked as a ratio-to-sales, them company will eventually enter a stage of stagnation and eventually decline (I am not saying there shouldn't be discipline in marketing resource management). But like any investments, it must provide a clear idea of how and when it will deliver a return on that investment. So marketing is a number of strategic investments and not just a cost item. The truth is any marketing dollars that are linked directly to sales improvement most likely are sales promotions that leads to discount and sometime brand erosion. The best marketing build brand equity and create demand. Field promotions, discount programs, sales incentives etc. are not marketing, these are sales operation expenses.

Marketing Mistake #2: Marketing is a department.

This is another common mistake that marketers make and that is to view it as a department within the organizational structure. And therefore marketing is the sole job of the marketing department. It is true that marketing is a function that’s organized within a marketing department. But if marketing thinking only happens within this department, I believe the company would not do well. Marketing is far too limited if it is left only to the marketing professionals. Progressive companies need to get all their departments to be customer oriented and focused. Marketing must be an integrated part of the entire organization, rather than a specific function. Successful marketing is the true integration of marketing, engineering, design, customer service, community management and operations beyond simply putting a multi-disciplinary team together. The team must be supported and managed effectively in an environment where each discipline respects and appreciates the perspective of others. Look at some of the most successful companies today and see who in the organization sets the marketing direction for those companies. More and more, it’s the CEO who’s also becoming the CMO while not officially although they do not usually carry that title.

Marketing Mistake #3: Marketing is all about the big idea and the marketing mix.

Marketing is often being marginalized to just coming up with the big idea and then managing the marketing mix and communications. Gone are the days of the Big Idea (Leo Burnett’s in the 80s). Many executives today still believe that marketing is about getting the “big idea” from their agencies and spending money effectively on the advertising and promotional mix. In another words optimizing your advertising dollars, will lead to a successful marketing campaign. It doesn’t matter what products they are marketing, many executives believe that the key to a successful campaign is to work with their advertising agencies to come up with big ideas to differentiate their product in the marketplace and win a few advertising awards along the way. The traditional marketing model is obsolete and many clients and agencies are still operating this way. Marketing is not about mix, it is about telling your story in the most authentic ways and the best way to do that is from their leaderships. The big idea is not about the advertising, the company itself should be the big idea! They missed it completely. And the marketing mix is not about the media, it is about orchestrating both mass and individual social conversation at scale.

Marketing Mistake #4: Try as hard as you can to sell.

For brands to sell they have to stop selling. Unless you’re on DTV or doing a tactical DM campaign. For brands to win the hearts and minds they so crave and to engineer brand desire, they must first earn those hearts and minds and tell people who you are and why you’re here. What is your purpose? Where does your company’s passion lie? What are your greatest capabilities, and what do you have to offer? What need do you see in the world that you are operating in? And you must earn your relevance through a view of the world and a perceived role within it that is a clear break from the bygone advertising practices of the 80s. Sell hard by selling less. Any advertising that tries too hard to sell will not work.

Marketing Mistake #5: Listening to your customers.

Today’s technological advancements have given companies the ability to target and talk to customers in a more precise manner. Yet, the new technologies allow us to listen to whatever is going on out there. Failing to use these tools effectively will result in companies totally disconnected with their customers. Social listening is not an option; it is the core of marketing intelligence. Don’t waste money on useless focus groups.

Mistake #6: Not listening to your customer.

This is the key difference between “Market Drive” and “Market Driving. Customer input is valuable in helping companies develop incremental innovation. However, customers are usually unable to conceptualize the benefits of revolutionary products, concepts and technologies. No market research will tell you what’s the next big idea. And no customers or your trade partners can tell you how you should do your marketing. Your customers can tell you the things that are broken and they want you to fix it. Listen to them. Make sure they know you are listening and make them happy. But they won’t create the future roadmap for your product or service. That’s your job. No you listen to your customers but you should never ask them what they want. They will tell you they want a car that self-drive and can fly.

Mistake #7: Making everything a CMO problem.

The average tenure of a CMO is 12-16 months these days and is getting shorter. No one wants the CMO job. The shortness of the typical CMO’s tenure is a tangible manifestation of corporate management's frustration with the inability of marketing to create economic value let alone the inability to drive change and transformation. Good marketing not only transforms customers but it should first transform the organization itself. Many CMOs are traditional marketers who are usually great advertising tacticians. Trained for years in traditional advertising, their primarily focus was in marketing communications activities to build brands. Many lack the strategic thinking and CMO must also relentlessly focus on unifying the disparate functions of marketing, operations, sales, service, and technology. For most companies, such integration suggests an unholy alliance of warring fiefdoms and silos, and that's precisely why the C-suite needs an individual with the power and authority to deliver the results. Marketing is about the customer experience.

Marketing Mistake #8: Marketing is a pure science.

Marketing can become over obsessed with logic and lost sight of the magic. Marketing has always aspired to be an “accurate science” status and has been searching for the best formula. Sometimes people are using fake science although data is becoming more and more important for marketing these days thanks for big data. Even with those data, we should not lose sight of the most important of marketing: magic, mystery and mastery.

March 27, 2015

So you are ready to transform your organization? You want your organization to leapfrog the industry? You want to deliver above industry average growth? And do you know what are the most common mistakes that leaders and even very smart and experienced leaders make? The most common one is sticking with the usual way, the easy way and the proven way. There is no usual, easy and safe way if the company has not been doing well or satisfactorily underperforming. It is not just about making a good product anymore. Leaders need to ask how does one make a meaningful contribution to society with product?

Whenever I was tasked to help global enterprises to move the next level, the first thing I did was to stop them from doing things the same old way. It was never easy. You don’t go the next level without taking calculated risks, offending people and forcing people to do things differently. No one wants change despite whatever slogan or lip service about how people want change. And everyone wants breakthrough. There is no free lunch. No pain no gain.

I’ve been working with some of the best high performance global leaders for decades to breakthrough and manage large scale transformation. These are the five most common mistakes CEO and their executive team make and all can easily be avoided.

Failing to build organization energy and momentum. Organizational energy is the invisible force which an organization uses to purposefully put things in motion and drives positive behavior to advance the company’s mission and business objectives. The strength of organizational energy manifests in the extent to which a company has mobilized its emotional, cognitive, and behavioral potential in pursuit of its goals and it makes company resilient. Energy traps often endanger productivity and innovation. You must understand how to release them from being trapped. This is not a one off exercise and cannot be performed by consultants. It is the executive team’s job.

Failing to have a vision and to translate that into a compelling and relevant story. Company cannot develop a strategy without a vision. A vision is not just a statement that vaguely describes a company’s aspiration. It needs to be authentic and anchored on the industry’s competitive reality and illustrate how that future if realized will benefit the organization and allow it to prosper and thrive. The vision needs to show the shared common destiny and a path to get there. Vision without strategy is worst than not having a vision.

Failing to understand how to create value and understand the core value drivers. This is very common for management and it is critical for the top 10 and all C-2 executives to understand what are the critical drivers of value for the organization. These ideas need to be deeply embedded in day-to-day managerial decisions. In mapping out company’s processes and decision structures, the CTV (Critical to Value) notion needs to be reflected in CTQ (Critical to Quality), QTR (Critical to Revenue) and CTC (Critical to Culture). Three of the most important metrics to organizational health. Getting the right decisions on a few of these key CTV points, the company cannot be too wrong even though it may make many execution mistakes which sometimes is unavoidable.

Failing to assemble a super team fast. Any successful transformation needs to have the support of a small high performance super team. It takes time for an organizational to rebuild capability and even hiring new people from the outside takes time. It is crucial that a company needs to assemble a swat team for quick deployment to solve any problem. Any problems that are left alone will signify that new management’s inability to drive change. Problems need to be fixed fast. Otherwise there is no credibility. This super team should always be looking out for the organization. They are people who take decisive action to solve problems. They are people who understand the vision of the company. And they are the people with high analytical ability (typically with management consultants training) and ready to look at any problems even without the experience and domain knowledge.

Failing to get rid of bad organizational habits and the incompetents. Any underperforming organization has bad habits and usually a lot of them. Be it leadership habits or organizational habits embedded in the mental model of leadership or organizational design. The first thing leaders must do is to get rid of these old habits and dogmas and people that are underperforming. The bottom 10% of managers must go. Don’t waste time on them. What do we mean by being strategic?

At the end of the day, smart leaders must ask the following five questions:

Do you understand the critical drivers of value and what are critical to quality/competition/performance/culture? Are they part of your management team’s KPIs?

Are you doing enough to focus or leverage investments in your core value proposition and brand story? Are you cutting back or divesting fast enough on unnecessary and non-strategic investments?

Can you name the top 5-10 people in the organizations that could potentially become part of your super team? If you can’t name at least 5, you have a problem.

Where are you spending the time? Are you devoting enough attention to matters that are important to building strong energy and momentum?

Are you applying data-driven perspectives on all aspects of decision makings and what areas you are not feeling comfortable that data might not be right or not properly interpreted?

February 21, 2015

El·e·gant, an adjective and define or characterized by or exhibiting refined, tasteful beauty of manner, form, or style. Marc Jacob? Chanel? Jil Sander? Hermes? All are unquestionably elegant by design in the fashion world. How about smartphones or interfaces? Can they be elegant? Or what about customer experiences? Can you describe a banking or customer service experience as elegant? Most people don’t.

Is elegant a word reserved solely for tangible product? The design world likes to use words such as “elegant”, “simple” and “user friendly”, many designers understand how to subtract in creating simple and elegant design solutions. Human factors usually subtract more than add. Good designers often take away complexity in objects or interfaces. Design is more than just making things simple. They appears simple but not necessarily simple. Design is the most complicated process but least understood.

Design should be strategic. Being strategic also means being human. 9 out of 10 designers barely understand what that means. Most are trained as design craftsman. There are very few design visionary and I only know a handful of them. They are also very few design managers. And that’s the reason why designers never made it to the boardroom and they complain they don’t have a voice. Because they are not strategic. Design becomes a competitive advantage for corporations when it is used strategically. At a meta level, design connects the dots between mere survival and humanism supporting by the underlying economics to make it feasible to produce and sell.

I have been hiring and mentoring designers (including some of the very best talents) for decades and can tell you which typology they belong in 5 minutes. It is very easy to find designers, it is not too difficult to find good designers, it is very hard to find design visionary. Because they are not trained in design schools. They need to be cultivated.

But there are so much business can learn from design. If the best design can be elegant, then can a business strategy be “elegant”? Or can a particular management style be described as “elegant”? Anything elegant is often simple; not everything simple is elegant. Things that are simple are often user friendly, not everything simple is user friendly. Sometimes complexity is needed. Simplicity has different meanings. Good businesses need to be simple and easy to understand, and that’s the investment criteria for Warren Buffet. Businesses are getting too complex these days and same for design. Long gone are the days where a few talented young folks sketching out ideas in a room. That's a mindset that stops designers from growing up to a highly complicated world.

Design process is never simple, it is often very messy as everyone has an opinion. Don't try to make it simple. But the result shouldn't be complicated. Design needs strong leadership and no different from other disciplines. Design never works in a highly politically environment and as a result you get design by committee – which is a recipe for disaster. Design management is to take the politics out and allow the essence remains. And the process is true to the mission - design to delight and make profits - not one but both.

Design needs strong leadership. Design never works if it is not managed. Best designers perform well in a professionally managed environment. Not the most desirable for many, but it is necessary. Apple design team is professionally managed and same for Mercedes and Burberry or BMW. There is no design without discipline. There is no discipline without intelligence. Strong design leaders are never popular, because they need to cut out the non-sense that designers to hide behind. To force people to unlearn old theories of design.

Designers wants to remain small, fully independent and less disciplined and that’s why most design firms cannot scale beyond certain size and fail after a few years. They want to ignore the commercial complexities and stay pure. I appreciate that too but companies cannot afford it. Unless it is your own business and you don't care about making profits.

Design for elegance is better for design for simplicity. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once said, “I wouldn’t give a fig for simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for simplicity on the other side of complexity.” Elegance is “far side” simplicity that is emotionally engaging, profoundly intelligent, and artfully crafted to be two things at once: simple and powerful. In today's super connected world, the proliferation of digital devices and experiences require designers to create new ways of harmonizing software and hardware with elegant connectivity – connecting humans in an elegant way. Industrial designers, human interface designers and mechanical engineers need to explore new theories for them to make physical products real and meaningful and elegant. Why elegance? It is not an elusive target? Industrial designers should stop thinking about functional ease and simplicity, that is an over simplify way of thinking design. Some times people love things that are not so easy. Think about your personal relationships, you don’t go for the easiest one, you go for where your hearts is. Design is the same. How do you put love in an industrial produced object? That’s our job.

February 10, 2015

This is the billion-dollar question: “How do we create the iPhone pr Walkman of wearables?” and “How do we create sub-ecosystems around these wearables?” At the CES who this year, you can still see everyone displaying their newest or not-so-new wearable ideas. No one can afford to miss the train but most of the wearables out there now are just toys and eventually will become thrown aways. I can't find a reason anyone would want to buy most these so called wearables. Google glass is officially a failed experiment, or at least for now. GoPro is a stellar success and Apple will enter that game soon. They have been granted a patent for a wearable camera that could possibly challenge action cameras leader GoPro.

The path to mass adoption of wearables will not be a straightforward one. There are numerous technology, user behavior and production economics barriers to cross. With all this buzz and emerging innovative conceptual designs competing for the dominance, there are still many questions to be asked about what the future holds and how consumers will adopt a different product paradigm. Even the smartphone is still shaping our behavior and we are still actively reprogramming ourselves. The smartphone is becoming the operating system of our professional and personal lives, our relationships with the outside world and emerging systems around it. When it comes to the operating system, the main battle will be an OS that will interoperate across all devices. This is the big play. The success of any dominant design for wearables will be based on successfully tackling of the 4Bs:

Balance, Benefit, Beauty and Behavior.

Balance: To design wearables, one must ensure that they are, indeed, wearable. That means comfortable and adaptable to the various places and spaces the body inhabits in the world. To do this, design needs to include studying the anthropometric measures of the human body and of the equilibrium between the various zones of the body. One key to success is ensuring that the form or shape of the wearable fits the body and its actions in the world. Nerdy high-tech designs will not cut it. Balance reflects the highest level of design excellence, seeking an unselfconsciousness in interactivity languages, adding a sense of space to that of place with engineering overtones that are human at the same time.

Benefit: Designers must first determine the real problem the wearable concept is trying to solve, needing to solve, able to solve. Focusing on needs means designers can concentrate on the things that deliver the highest value. The benefit doesn’t have to be a known benefit today and there could be some needs users don’t even know exist until they see them. Sometimes these benefits appear to be small but actually can make a big difference in behavioral change. Contained product moments and the tiniest interactions are important in designing the customer experience of wearables, and designers must try to transform them into opportunity.

Beauty: The consumer needs to love the design. It needs to have visual appeal so, to the user, it doesn’t look like something you see in a Sci-Fi movie. The design needs to be expressive and not only limit to the form factor, but the overall interactive experience. The connectivity piece is key – it needs to allow for seamless wireless connection. The interactions or interface design is the trickiest part. The designers must translate the mass into energy, form and relationship. This is about creating order out of chaos, to put order into things, to make things more simple, to give meaning to objects through the presence of a design language.

Behavior: This is the least predictable part. Just look at all those health tracking devices, there is a tremendous gap exists between collecting and reporting data and changing behavior, there are little evidence to suggest that these wearable is making people more healthier. But for sure, the most successful wearable would be those who can influence our behavior as a mechanism for human behavior change and reinforcement. The subconscious mechanisms by which a human brain forms habits are still a bit of a mystery, and this can let us down a path to come up with devising tools for changing them.

November 15, 2014

The world is suddenly obsessed with smart technologies and this time around it seems unstoppable. Our everyday electrical and mechanical industrial object will now be occupied and ran by software and connected to the cloud. It also means each object (as small as some smoke detectors and as large as automobiles) will now be equipped with tons of sensors and can be able to adapt to different environment and individual needs.

It is essential that the next wave of industrial revolution will make us more efficient and empowered (and more human I hope), and data will be at the heart of this revolution. That's another big conversation. All the Nest, GoPro and Beats received multi-billion-dollar valuations through private investments or acquisitions and everyone is wondering why these hardware companies suddenly in such high demand. Because hardware and software are going through different commodity lifecycles and now software is becoming a commodity. They used to be difficult and expensive to develop and even to deploy, that that is changing. It is hard for software company to get into hardware much as hardware companies struggle to get into software. Hardware cannot be done by a few geeks in the basement, and involves massive R&D and specialists including megatronics engineers, electrical engineers, industrial designers, wireless engineers and usually takes a longer time to develop.

Software you can fix it with a download, and hardware you can’t. They are massive supply chain challenges when it comes to logistics and component supplies. The value of firms who can marry software and hardware will have a competitive advantage over their competitors. Essentially everything we use today will be fitted with some sensors, processors perhaps, and may be a screen and will recarnate and become of Internet of Things. For the last three decades, software engineering has advanced to a state that sophisticated codes can be embedded into machines. And the availability of cheap sensors and super powerful processors is powering this cycle of data revolution. All of a sudden, software, hardware and communications infrastructure are advancing us into a new era. Old world manufacturing + low cost computer processing + ubligious computing + cloud = smart new world and many cool products.

It sounds like the Apple story all over again, does it? The hardware and software integration capability of Apple, the ecosystem, the brand and user experience are now not only inspiring consumer gadgets company, not it’s influence is beyond its own industry. I know this is an overused story, but he Apple influence is still here, and perhaps it will be here for a long time even when the company stop creating great stuff one day. Microsoft ex-CEO Ballmer saw that coming in 2012 in a letter to shareholders. "It's important to recognize a fundamental shift under way in our business, we see ourselves as a devices and services company." Microsoft had the strategy right but couldn’t execute it fully with the exception of X-Box. Microsoft’s future revenue will still be coming in from software and it isn't going to change anytime soon. The transformation from software to hardware is harder that you think.

The idea that hardware is now the new software is pretty real. There is a business model implication here. These hardwares are mostly priced between $100 to $250 and they a gateway and great way to sell software. We are seeing a revival of hardware and this time, it is hardware first and software and then date on the cloud, it will bring new technological advances in cloud-powered hardware that boosts productivity, efficiency and manifests as beautifully designed objects that fit into our hands and homes.

September 01, 2014

As everything is moving faster and less predictable as it seems while organizations struggling to understand what it means and what options to take and how to land on the right decisions at the right time.The results often are inactions or delayed repsonses that cost companies.

Both senior and middle managers’ job include understanding, interpreting and communicating options for executive decisions, both as change agents and advocates. The toolkit that they have is very limited. Sensemaking is a vital skill and a new managerial discipline that is lacking across many organizations and functional units. How do we define sensemaking? It is how we try to make sense of the world and associated challenges so we can see and act in it. It also carries the concept of sufficiency, which is whether we know enough about the interrelationships and dynamics of the scenarios (events, places, people etc.) to make a contextually appropriate decision.

The two main academic thinkers in the field are Karl Weick and Brenda Dervin both of their work are very user readable. Weick I think tends to apply a more normative and organizational approach while Dervin looks at individuals and communication. Karl Weick emphases the importance of “mapping.” It is not enough to collect a lot of data, as we do these days and it is often overwhelming for managers, what is really important is that we need to take that complexity and map it in a simple way that can be communicated and shared so that a team or an organization can have a shared view of what the environment is like right now. Make complexity communicable but yet not making it overly simple.

I have seen people drawing simple circles or big maps with arrows and boxes but fail to communicate anything except the situation is complex and end up comfusing themselves as well as others. So beware of those fancy arrows and boxes that are useless. Good mapping provide managers with the benefit of seeing what’s going on and comparing that with their mental models. Good decisions making depends heavily on good sensemaking that includes important cues and signals so managers and senior executives can have a bigger capacity to make sense of uncertainty and emerging behavior. It has always been a core part of our strategic design thinking toolkit and there is no shortage of demand from clients to learn that skills.

July 14, 2014

It is every designer’s dream to design a chair. I have yet to meet an industrial designer that doesn’t want to design a chair or a car. It is designer’s dream for those who study transportation design is to design a car and I get it. Chairs and tables? The reality is how often designers get a chance to design their own chairs? And every transportation designers ended up doing is styling a car that was designed by a computer. There are disproporationately large amount of chairs being designed than to other objects and products.

Any object whether it is chair, a table, a smartphone, or a coffee maker does not exist in a vacuum and are part of a informal system that links to a complex set of interactions both human and machines. And even a complex layer of meanings for a relatively simple object – a chair or a functional tool – a smartphone. For some, the term “phenomenology” is only restricted to the characterization of sensing qualities such as seeing, touching, hearing, etc.: what it is like to have sensations of different kinds that forms a human experience. But our experience is normally much richer in content than mere sensation.

Sensational experience is great but short-lived. To create meanings is the ultimate human experience. To design, in phenomenological terms, is to address the meaning of things or objects have in our own experience, in our own “life-world” and how we "experience" them. Just ask any designers if they see their discipline this way? Mostly not and 90% of designers’ effort are on aesthetics and not phenomenology. Is there a discipline called "design phenomenology"?

Phenomenology is the examination of the structure of various types of experience ranging from a broader and deeper perspectives and including deep diving on perception, thought, memory, imagination, emotion, desire, and volition to bodily awareness, embodied action, and social activities, linguistic activity etc. We need to apply that before we strategize a new business concept, a new service design model or an innovative new product.

It is what we need to understand context of anything. The structure of these forms of experience typically involves what Edmund Albrecht Husserl (German philosopher who established the school of phenomenology) called “intentionality”, that is, the directedness of experience toward things in the world, the property of consciousness that it is a consciousness of or about something and this is what makes the jon fun. It is not for someone without imagination. It is all about seeing “intends” as well as “jobs-to-perform” and “concepts of the world”. The idea is studying the units of consciousness is like “giving voice to” and these units of consciousness are called intentional acts or intentional experiences. It is basically the most human centric approach to understanding human experiences.

When designers try to design experiences, perhaps they should need to first consider phenomenology. It is not really a rocket science, for centuries poets, writers, painters, film producers are born phenomenologists. I think most of us are born phenomenologists particular in the days of Facebook and other social media where we share everything, we understand very well by means of words, videos and images, our insights with our friends — we are all practicing phenomenology without knowing it.

May 25, 2014

We can see it’s coming. The future of work in the next five years will be so different from the last 50 years. There are more than a few driving forces behind this: demographic shift, lifestyles of millennial, technology, organization design, nature of competition, and human capital flow etc. Management of the workplace used to be quite simple. All one has to manage are:

What is the direction in terms of how work is being performed?

What tools are needed to support the work?

How much effort is needed to achieve the desired goals?

How much persistence should be applied to get better results?

What incentives are in place to motivate the individuals to achieve those goals?

Our work pattern is changing. You can no longer distinguish between the Travel-Worker pattern and Wherever-Worker pattern or the Whenever-Worker pattern. And there is the Whoever-Worker which is adding new challenges. These Work-Pattern Personas are not mutually exclusive and many traditional incentives won’t work for them. Actually, many of the incentives we use today make companies worse off. They encourage more short-termism as well as each optimizing for their own good rather than the company’s whole, which ends up in more politics and a lack of collaboration.

The best incentives are the intrinsic ones. These self-generated factors (self-responsibility, freedom to be creative, develop unique skills and abilities, interesting and challenging work, opportunities for advancement) all have a deeper and longer-term effect than monetary incentives. I guess for the millennial, the most effective extrinsic motivator is title. They just can’t wait to lead even though they are far from ready. It is like taking on a new PS4 game at the advanced difficulty for the first time and getting killed in 3 seconds. Intrinsic motivation is powerful. It comes from a person’s internal desire to be something…. to do something…. to make a dent in the universe. They are their own dream-makers. They are the best people you can find.So what would be the communication and collaboration technologies needed for the future workplace? This is purely anecdotal but we do have a lot of research in this area, which I can’t share. The emerging needs for a worker is not being more productive, as most are very productive already and with these little devices that we carry around, we are all working 24/7 (at least myself). Here are a few ideas:

Idea Mapping Networks. As the knowledge workplace is more reliant on creative ideas and often innovative new ideas rebuilt on top of each other. The future workplace will have a solution to map the origin of ideas and link them to those who improvise on them while not losing sight of the sources and the associated mental models that it derived from. This 3D visualization will link all important documents and work performed and will be the starting point of any creative brainstorming session.

Blue Collar Special Forces Central Comand System. Blue-collar field workers are often less motivated and often see their job is meaningless. Taking a page from the special forces and using augmented reality technologies (virtual glasses and dual-comm bone conduction headsets etc.) will not only improve their ability to handle onsite problems but make them feel they are part of a special forces that they are out there solving complicated problems. They can act and feel more professional, working and talking to the command center with people who support them to perform their tasks.

Emotional Management Systems. Emotional management in the workplace is often a performance issue. This is often too personal for your colleagues or even managers to deal with. If it is taken care by technology that is a different story, because the system won’t judge you. They are there to help. With biosensors to monitor your level of stress and frustrations, perhaps they can activate some breakers to help you to cool off. Marily Henner was right she said “Being in control of your life and having realistic expectations about your day-to-day challenges are the keys to stress management, which is perhaps the most important ingredient to living a happy, healthy and rewarding life”.

Virtual Work Bench. Imagine a share desk that a team can work together on even when they’re in different offices. It takes the idea of a share bench (desktop) further and allows sharing and real time editing of moving of documents or any objects. It is available when people are assigned to a team and you can always switch back to your private desk with a wipe gesture. Imagine one real-time synchronized virtual desk.

I have a few more but I have to get back to my day job. I realized I have not written a blog post for almost two months (probably the longest since I started this blog 7 years ago). I was jetting around the world running meetings with 3 hours of sleep every day and often I almost forget where I'm at. Sometimes I woke up ending up at our Shanghai, London, San Francisco or Mexico offices. Here you go, another unmet need for the new workplace – please tell me where I am at now.

March 23, 2014

I recently took my strategy and innovation class out of the classroom. Guess where we ended up? A safari or a zoo (whatever you want to call it). What’s a better place that teaching strategy where you can see the survival of the fittest. It was a suggestion from my students.

History is filled with examples of animal species with Dinosaurs as the lead example that were made extinct by their inability to adapt environmental change and the prediction from scientists is that there are more to come. An alarming finding that was published in the scientific journal Nature that suggested more than a million existing species could be extinct by 2050 because of climate change. Probably 80% of those species we have never heard of.

Can studying why species in the safari went extinct provide us with lessons for business? The answer is a yes, the first being that not everyone will survive. Everyone knows that but the big question is how to make sure your company is not on that list? To survive, it means understanding what is your food chain. There is a simple food link between two animals and many animals struggle to obtain adequate amounts of their particular food(s) and cannot simply change their diets as other foods becomes available and ultimately face extinction. For business, the lesson is about your revenue streams might not sustain as the industry structure shifts and you need to reinvent your business models. Companies needs to change diet before they run out of food.

The second lesson is to know your role in the food chain. Some animals in the jungle can eat both plants and each other, as well as use each other for shelter and nesting. Companies need to learn to use other companies by way of strategic alliances to shelter competition to increase their chance of survival especially for those who are not in a position of influence the market. Think about what these terms like predator, prey, continent, climate, and habitat means in business strategy and what role does your company play? Darwin suggested that extinctions were a prolonged and often undetectable process. It is true for business as people or animals in the jungle don’t see survival in a strategic manner.

The third one is understanding your competition and their innovation capabilities. Companies should not just worry about the external change such as discontinuties but need to be aware of the evolutionary potential of other companies or species if we are talking about the safari. Animals cannot do that because they do not posses the intelligence, nor will they hire consultants - but companies can. It is the practice of strategic foresights, what we do that to ensure companies can engineer their own evolution and create their most favorable conditions for that to happen. Someone once said “The rules of the jungle do not apply to those who wrote the rules of the jungle." There is a lot you can learn by spending a day at the safari with me.